Sh. Haitham: My first response to the Paris incident

Thoughts on the Paris shooting…
“I get a sense of deja vu when these incidents occur. The immediate rush to judgement on the Muslims by politicians and media, followed by the inevitable knee jerk condemnation and outrage expressed by the Muslims and the incessant apologies.
I frankly grow tired of this. I am not responsible for the actions of a few and see no reason why I even need to apologise. No other community is required to do this so why are the Muslims expected to do so?
Because it puts the Muslims on the defensive and hides the real ideological points that go unchallenged by the Muslims. We are so busy apologising and being collectively castigated that we don’t see the real argument. And that argument is that Islam is a medieval, backward way of life that has no place in modernity. That liberal secularism is the best way of life. That freedom of speech is the height of civilisation and that freedom gives the right to insult others including religion. And if you want to be modern and be considered civilised then you should accept that your God and your prophet should be ridiculed. You may not like it but you need to accept it.
I’m not going to talk about the fiqh of whether this action committed yesterday is halal or haram (I really don’t care for these extremist or terrorist labels) rather I want to talk about freedom of speech.
The problem with free speech is that it is based on the premise that it is a universal value that everyone accepts. It isn’t. Rather free speech is a liberal position. Liberalism doesn’t represent the default position. Billions of people around the world are not liberals. The 1.5 billion Muslims across the world don’t accept that you are free to insult Muhammad (saws) in the name of free speech. Practising Christians across the world from deepest Africa to the US Bible belt don’t accept that Jesus be insulted. Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists all over the world do not accept that their religious symbols be insulted. So let’s drop the pretence and have an honest discussion. It is of the most basic human civility to respect others. That is a real universal value. That is the starting point – not free speech. To insult others is to treat them with gross insensitivity, insolence, or contemptuous rudeness. So the onus is upon those who want to allow such behaviour to prove why this depravity should be permitted.
The idea of free speech is flawed in theory and politicised in practice. It is an idea impossible to implement, and has never been implemented anywhere historically – not even today, in liberal societies.
Free speech does not exist in absolute form. There is no absolute freedom to insult. Across the liberal West, we find defamation laws, sedition laws, professional standards and journalistic standards of reporting about politicians and celebrities. In Germany, denial of the Holocaust is prohibited by law. In the United Kingdom, the Public Order Act makes “threatening, abusive or insulting words” a criminal offence. In Australia, Commonwealth Criminal Code makes it an offence for a person to use a postal or similar service “in a way … that reasonable persons would regard as being … offensive.”
As for in practice, we find numerous examples of people being convicted for mere speech. In the United Kingdom, Azhar Ahmad was convicted in 2012 for “grossly offensive communications” because of a comment he made on Facebook about British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, which read, “all soldiers should die and go to hell.” District Judge Jane Goodwin, in arriving at the conviction, noted that the test was whether what was written was “beyond the pale of what’s tolerable in our society.” Even Charlie Hebdo, the magazine printing the offensive cartoons while claiming to be a bastion of free speech – previously lambasted their own cartoonist Maurice Sinet for writing a biting article about Nicholas Sarkozy’s son which appeared to denigrate him for marrying a Jewish heiress for money. Sinet was subsequently sacked by his employers for refusing to apologise.
So in reality the principle of free speech is used selectively as a political tool. When Muslim sanctities are denigrated, we’re lectured about free speech and how it can’t be qualified. Yet when Muslims and others insult, they are met with the force of law. Who decides about when and how to qualify free speech? The real question, then, is not about freedom. It is about how far power can go. It’s about power using the notion of freedom to extend and enforce its reach.
Ultra-liberals may say here that they disagree with all these laws and cases and maintain absolute free speech for all – unqualified, carte blanche. But is such a position conducive to society? Would we accept white people using the “n word” against blacks? Or a person shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre? Or a student insulting his teacher, or a child her parent? Everyone teaches their children to respect others, not to insult. Why? Because insults beget insults, hate and rancour. Is that the type of society we want for ourselves and for our children?
Some forget, perhaps, that even in the western tradition, free speech was upheld as a most basic value for specific ends: to allow the profession of ideas, inquiry into truths and the ability to hold government to account. Do any of these noble ends (all of which are upheld in Islam) require the freedom to insult? Or does insult, in fact, defeat the very purpose of these ends? Insulting another person’s beliefs does not encourage them to think. Instead, it makes them more entrenched, defensive and prepared to retaliate – that’s human nature.
Indeed the only reason why we even discuss freedom of speech is because secular liberalism has dominated both East and West, not by the strength of its values, but by the strength of its militaries. The Muslim world resisted and continues to do so. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, which crumbled under the force of secularism, Islam did not. Lands were divided and colonised, conquered and exploited. The Islamic state, the Caliphate, was dismantled, but the Islamic mind remained. It is in an effort to break this resistance that the insults come – to impose secular liberalism, to consolidate its victory forever.
Is the western world really in a position to lecture others about violence? Or about values? The “free world” seeks to dominate and impose itself upon the rest by means of military, political and epistemic violence: perpetuating Orientalist fantasies about Muslims being prone to violence, backward, unable to manage themselves; propping up dictators like Sisi and King Abdullah; destroying entire countries through war and invasion; using unmanned drones to kill indiscriminately in Yemen and Pakistan. This is the broader context of provocation in which the global Muslim reaction to insults come. It here that far more attention needs to be focussed.
One thing that needs to be clear is that Islam is not against critique. Any attempt to quash or stifle serious debate is unacceptable in Islam. Critique of any ideas or beliefs is halal. Insulting any beliefs or people is not. Critique Islam all you want. Write in measured, considered tones about why Islam is not the truth, or why the Prophet was not a prophet. Such books fill bookstores across the West as it is. Never have any of these books resulted in a riot. But to mock, to denigrate, to provoke, to agitate – that is something else, and is unacceptable.
Everyone has lines they will not cross. All worldviews and cultures are sensitive with respect to certain things they hold dear. Modernity did not do away with sanctities; it merely shifted them from the religious to the worldly.
To insult is not an acceptable mode of interaction for mature, self-respecting people. It is the modus operandi of pseudo-intellectuals with nothing to offer, no intent to engage, and only interested in projecting their own insecurities onto others. Insults bring nothing to society except hate and divisiveness. “